


Not Quite Strip Poker

by o_gets_pegged



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dhawan!Doctor is too pure for this world, F/M, I actually edited this, Resolved Sexual Tension, Roleswap AU, Strip Poker, The TARDIS ships it, but whittaker!master will soon fix that, handjob, mean lady hot, to everybody's surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24221668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o_gets_pegged/pseuds/o_gets_pegged
Summary: The Doctor just wanted some peace and quiet. The Master has other ideas.(Or: Dhawan!Doctor and Whittaker!Master play strip crazy eights and the Master gets impatient).
Relationships: The Doctor (Dhawan)/The Master (Whittaker), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	Not Quite Strip Poker

The Doctor is glad that today is quiet. 

He woke up with a glaring headache, and dropped his companions off to give himself some peace and quiet with his favourite quantum theory book and a pile of chocolate biscuits. The headache is fading, by now, although he still isn’t sure what caused it; stress, most probably, or the TARDIS adjusting its time difference for England after Abydos. 

The Doctor hums and flicks the page, worrying his lip between his teeth like he always does when reading something particularly interesting, and takes a deep breath in. The library’s familiar scent wraps around him and settles in his bones, chamomile and old books and sharp, tangy blood —

The blood, he realizes with a start, is most certainly a recent development. The Doctor cautiously closes his book and looks around, internally filing any possible invaders — the Kasaavin? Judoon? Daleks? — but the TARDIS seems empty. _See anything, old girl?_ he asks her, and she responds with a noncommittal beep. 

False alarm, then. His senses have gotten dulled in his old age, loath as he is to admit it. The scent has gone away now, anyway, with no hint that it really did exist in the first place. That would not surprise him. The Doctor has a history of hallucinations, and he’s been rather jumpy in this regeneration, a small man with frayed nerves. The Doctor sits back down on his couch and picks his book back up again.

It takes him a few seconds to find his old place on the page. His hearts are still racing at the thought of an intruder in the TARDIS, although he knows she would have alerted him. It’s impossible, and yet he can’t get his pulse to slow.

The Doctor takes a good, long, steadying breath. _Everything is fine. Nobody is here, and everything is fine. You’re all alone, just as you like._

A frightening and more than a little inconvenient gloved hand snatches the book from the Doctor’s hands. 

“Hello,” says the Master.

The Doctor’s breath catches in his throat, more from shock than anything else, and he glances up at her, trying to not look too surprised. “Hello,” he says back, shooting an indignant _Really?_ at the TARDIS. The TARDIS is conveniently silent.

The Master is standing above him, hips canted at an obscene angle, one hand resting on a cane he knows contains her favorite rapier, and the other clutching his book. Her vest is bright, royal red, her shirt starch white, and her trousers are deep, pitch black (perhaps false leather, he wonders, by the way they hug her thighs). “This,” she says, holding up his book, “looks extraordinarily boring.”

“Why are you in my TARDIS?”

“That’s not much of a greeting, is it?” she says, pouting her blood red lips in a perfect little frown. She looks almost innocent, frowning like this. 

“I said hello,” says the Doctor, and snatches his book back from her. He doesn’t trust her not to rip out all the pages and sprinkle them on the ground in front of him, just for a fun rainy day activity. (Not that it’s raining. Neither the TARDIS nor the vortex cannot have any sort of weather, let alone something complicated like rain or hail). “Why are you in my ship?”

“Thought I might stop by. See how the old fam is doin’, eh?”

The Doctor watches her cautiously. It is very much not her modus operandi to see how the old fam is doing. The Master has never in her life just dropped by for a spot of tea, or a quick chat about the Prime Minister, or a game of chess — there is always another objective, a prize at the end, a price to pay for whatever she asks. “The ‘fam’ isn’t here, right now,” he says, warily. “Try again later, won’t you?” 

“I don’t think I will.”

“Leave me alone,” says the Doctor, who is not up for her mind games right now, metaphorically or literally. He picks up his book again. 

A few seconds later, the Doctor glances up from his reading to see that the Master has not left him alone whatsoever — she is still standing there, leaning on her sword-cane, not even twitching a finger or blinking an eye. This is a stillness she learned aeons ago. She is so terribly, perfectly still, it unnerves him to his very core, like her hearts have stopped beating, like she is surviving without oxygen, without sustenance, without _movement._

“Let’s play cards,” she says. 

He does not agree, and yet he finds himself sitting across from her in the dim light of a room deep within the TARDIS, dealing out beautiful cream-colored cards. They sit on red velvet chairs pushed up to a small, wooden table, a glass of whiskey in front of the Master that the Doctor can’t quite remember where she obtained. A glittering chandelier hangs overhead, with enough jewels to overflow a comfortably sized bathtub, and the walls are adorned with portraits of men the Doctor does not recognize. Neither can quite remember any card games, and they decide upon an old Earth one titled Crazy Eights of which they had a collective foggy memory of the rules. 

The Master rests her delicate chin in her gloved hands, watching the Doctor’s every movement. She almost has the look of a resting tiger, with her lazy, half-lidded eyes and the slightest, bloodlike smear of lipstick near the corner of her mouth. “Deal me eight cards.”

He blinks, focusing on something that isn’t how gorgeous she looks. The clock on the wall that he’s taken apart several times, perhaps, that feels like it’s sending him some malicious message with every second that goes by. _Tick-tick-tick, this is a terrible idea._ “Five, I’m certain.”

“Eight.”

The Master frowns, but deals them both another three cards, then flips the top card of the deck over. Ace of spades. 

The Master goes first. The Master always goes first. 

Three of spades.

Neither of them speaks for a long while. Ten of spades. Ten of clubs. King of clubs. Six of clubs. Eight of hearts, which functions as diamonds. The Doctor finds himself watching his own hand less and less and letting his eyes wander to the Master more and more. The sly smile before she plays a hand. The slow tap of her gloved fingers on the table. The arched eyebrow she reserves just for him, just for her own victories.

He gets so wrapped up in the game (if he’s honest with himself, wrapped up in his opponent — but when has the Doctor ever been known to be honest with himself?) that he nearly jumps from surprise when the Master says, out of nowhere, “Let’s make a bet.”

“A bet?” says the Doctor, as if the Master hasn’t scared him nearly out of his skin for the second time today. “What sort of bet?” Here it is, he’s sure, that price, that objective. 

“Something for when I win. Something for,” and the way she says it makes the Doctor think she suspects the next scenario is an impossibility, “when you win.”

The Doctor plays a card. “You do know I’m not about to agree to one of your depraved little games where I barter away my soul or my real name.” A light jest. The Master knows his real name (although he would say that Doctor is real as anything else), and she has whispered it in his ear as she dangled something he wanted desperately out of his reach. 

The Master smirks, and it’s the polar opposite of her sweet disappointment from earlier. “Is your current state of dress on the table?” 

“You want to bet on my clothes?” The Doctor flushes, and hopes to Rassilon the semi-darkness hides the pink of his cheeks. 

“Indeed.” She plays her next card, belatedly, and runs a slim finger down the clasps of her own vest. The Doctor is more than a little embarrassed by the way his eyes so obviously track that small movement of her hand. 

“Now is not the time, Master.”

“Do tell me, dearest, why the _hell_ not?” She makes the sentence sound like a thing of beauty. The Master’s hell is one the Doctor would willingly submit himself to, he thinks, although he does nothing to betray the idea to her.

He can’t think of a good reason, so he says, “Fine,” and plays a five of hearts. 

The Doctor smiles. Eight of spades. “Clubs,” she says. She has two cards left, and the Doctor can’t help but think that he wants her to play both of them, looking into his eyes with that intensity that makes him feel like she was looking directly at his soul.

He draws a card. 

She plays an ace of clubs. 

The Doctor’s hand has no aces and no clubs. He has a creeping feeling that he’s about to lose. “Do I say go fish?” he quips, against the pounding of his hearts, as he draws another card.

Queen of clubs, and she’s out.

“Off,” she says, pointing to his argyle, college professor-style sweater vest. He’d picked it because he thought it made him look smarter. The Master expressed her hatred of it whenever possible. 

“You never said _you_ got to pick what article of clothing I had to remove,” the Doctor complains, thinking about sliding off his shoes like the smug bastard the Master is.

“I’m changing the rules. And you lost, so you can’t argue.” 

The Doctor slides the vest off over his head, trying and probably failing to look at all sexy. “Good enough?” He feels vulnerable now, with just his white button-up and slacks, sitting in front of the Master.

“Shirt too.”

“Play again, then.” The Doctor has the slightest bit of an upper hand, now. He collects the cards and shuffles. “The same game?”

“Deal five cards.”

The Doctor grins. All kinds of wins, today. He deals out the cards, flips the first one over. They play. 

“If I didn’t know any better,” says the Master, “I would have thought you’d wanted me to win.”

The Doctor gulps. Had he really been that obvious? “If you didn’t know any better,” he repeats.

“Why, surely you didn’t want to lose?” The Master talks like she’s a lady at a casino from the American South, for some reason, and he thinks she would do well with a cold glass of lemonade. The whiskey at her hand is a few sips shy of empty, and he hasn’t seen her pick it up throughout their entire game. This would be concerning, but she’s the Master, so it isn’t. (Or rather, it is, because everything is concerning with her, but he’s learned to sort the really important threats with the just generally concerning issues). 

“Of course not.”

Card. Card. Card. Card. The Doctor has to draw, again. The Master is playing at a faster pace than before, and her piercing eyes keep flicking down to his throat. 

“You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“I wasn’t aware there was any sort of skill in this game.” Simply luck, and the Doctor had never had very good luck. There is always the possibility that the Master is cheating. Slim, of course, since he’s been dealing the entire time. But he isn’t about to put it past her. 

“There’s skill in every game, Doctor.” 

The Master wins. She licks her bright red lips, and says, “Shirt, please.”

“Don’t you think this has gone a little too far?” says the Doctor. 

“Quite the contrary. I’m afraid it hasn’t gone far enough.” 

The Doctor unbuttons his shirt, slowly, fumbling over the buttons, before tossing it to the floor. The chill isn’t bad, but it is noticeable, and the TARDIS adjusts the climate settings almost immediately. The Master narrows her eyes at him, and he has the not-altogether-uncomfortable feeling that she is looking at him like a fresh custard cream. 

He clears his throat. “Five, again?” 

“Come here.”

“Five?” he says, a bit louder. 

She sighs, and steps up onto her chair, then steps onto the table. The Doctor wonders, for a moment, if it can hold the extra weight of a person, but it seems to do just fine. She’s so much taller than him now, and he finds that it isn’t unattractive. 

“Hello,” he says.

She slides down and lands neatly on his lap. “Hello,” she says, and kicks the chair away to give herself some room. 

He finds that he cannot quite breathe anymore. (Also, he is distinctly erect.)

He doesn’t have to, though, because the Master kisses him so intensely she’s practically shoving her tongue down his throat. The Doctor lets her. There isn’t much of a choice otherwise, and she’s _good_ at this, cupping one hand around the back of his head and resting the other on his bare chest.

The Master lets up, and he whispers, “Your clothes, now.”

“You didn’t win,” she says, with a knifelike grin. 

He privately thinks to himself that if this is what he gets for losing, he doesn’t particularly want to win. “Let’s go somewhere — _fuck_.” He cuts himself off. The Master has trailed her kisses down the side of his neck, and she’s bitten down without any warning. It hurts like hell, but in a delicious and undeniably fantastic way, and he squirms underneath her.

“You were saying?”

“Bed?” he manages, flush and so, so hard, and he needs her, he needs her, he needs her. 

She trails a finger down the bridge of his nose. “Ah-ah-ah,” she chides, and she shakes her head. The Master reaches down, grasps the zip of his trousers, and yanks. 

“Come on,” the Doctor grumbles. It’s not a denial, not at all, he just really, really would rather be on a mattress, with blankets, in the warmth of his own bed. 

He’s not complaining anymore when the Master has her gloved hand wrapped around his cock and is whispering “Beg,” her breath hot in his ear. The leather is ever so rough, and her teeth nip at his skin. The Doctor takes a shaking breath in, trying desperately not to roll his hips at her touch. 

“I said,” she says again, and this time when she bites him she bites hard, “Beg.”

“For what?” 

Her brows arch. She pulls her hand out of the Doctor’s trousers and takes her glove off, running it lightly over the Doctor’s back, the ghost of skin on skin. The Doctor feels a rush of disappointment. 

“I like the gloves,” he complains.

“Beg for the gloves, then,” the Master commands, her gentle fingers on him a reminder of the painful, wonderful things she can do with her fingernails, when she wants to. He does his best not to squirm.

“I’m not begging you for anything,” he says, an air of finality in his tone.

She kisses him again, and her voice is loud in his mind. _Not yet, I see._ Her hands, one gloved and one naked, tangled in his hair. She tastes like blood (normal, for her) and steel and crisps and vanilla. _I missed you._

The Doctor should be surprised at the whiplash-inducing subject change, but this is the _Master_. She doesn’t surprise him anymore. _I missed you, too._ A beat passes, and he can’t help but ask. _Salt and vinegar crisps, Master?_

_A girl’s gotta eat._ She pulls away and wipes off that one little lipstick smudge. “Don’t you like salt and vinegar, Doctor?”

“I detest salt and vinegar.” He seemingly doesn’t mind the taste when it was in her mouth, although he knows better than to admit it to her. “You could’ve eaten chocolate, or something.”

“Chocolate crisps?”

“Chocolate — just chocolate. If you were planning on kissing me.”

“What makes you think this was planned?” She kisses him again, and planned or not, it’s fantastic. He almost doesn’t notice when, somehow, her hand snakes back down and is in his trousers again. _Almost_ , because she flicks a quick finger over his slit and the Doctor bites down on a surprised moan. 

“You missed this, didn’t you,” says the Master.

“Missed your power plays?” 

_Missed coming apart at my touch_ , says the Master in his head. Her regrettably bare hand strokes him, gentle and rhythmic, and he can’t stop the string of curses in their so closely woven together minds. 

The Doctor can’t help it; he starts to move his hips along with the movement of her palm, burying his face in the crook of his neck to stop himself from moaning gibberish into the guts of the TARDIS. (Last time he was loud like that, she’d angrily locked all the doors in a clear message of _keep it the fuck down next time._ ) 

For a few moments, the only sound is his stifled moaning. His thoughts fracture and lace themselves together wrong — isn’t it funny that this friction is so glorious? It’s simply physics, after all, but it’s physics that can send him into the depths of pleasure and erase every idea in his brain. 

It occurs to him that she needs something, too. She’s started to move himself on his leg in the rhythm of his contained and desperate thrusts, whispering horribly dirty things in his ear. He hooks his teeth on her throat, and tries to give her a painful bruise for tomorrow morning, partially because he wants her to make just as much of a fool of herself as she is and partially because he needs to do something with his mouth. 

He ends up sloppily biting at her with more tongue than planned, but she murmurs, “Keep doing that.” The Doctor has always been overly eager to win the Master’s sincere praise; it stirs at something dark and hungry deep within him. He nips again, the Master’s hand on his cock getting faster by the second, feeling his teeth break her skin.

The Master cries out. “ _Fuck_ ,” she says. “Oh, you’re good, you’re very good —”

He’d really, really not meant to get himself off from her tiny compliment, but before he knows it, the Doctor is moaning some embarrassing sound that to his dismay is an awful lot like _Oh Master, Master_ , and spending himself in her wonderful, wonderful hand. 

The next minutes are glorious, fuzzy, Master-scented. She takes her hand back to herself and kisses him gentle and sweet on his forehead. “Are you going to fall asleep on me, Doctor? And without anything on my end?” 

The Doctor manages to murmur an apology. Even without most of his brain fully functioning, he’s letting her do her silly little power plays (and, he pretends not to admit to himself, enjoying them too much). “Please — can we please go —”

“Go?” She must be just as turned on as he was a few seconds ago, and yet she’s smooth as always, leaning back on his knees, licking her bloodred lips, acting like she’s sitting on a throne instead of a Time Lord’s lap who is also currently in a pool of his own come. 

He sifts through his finally congealing mind for the proper words. “Bedroom’s just down the hall,” he says.

Surprisingly enough, the Master climbs off him and walks out of the room, shutting the door behind her. He blinks after her, still sitting in uncomfortable wetness, still slowly regaining braincells as time ticks by. 

The Master comes back in, seemingly unchanged, arms crossed behind her back. “My dearest Doctor,” she says, smirking. 

“Master?” The Master hiding something is never good. He’d let down his guard, and now she’s going to shoot him, or stab him, or poison him —

She tosses her lacy black bra on the floor in front of him and raises that one eyebrow, leaving him stuttering ( _please_ don’t go hard again, he begs himself) and squirming. “I didn’t win,” he says helplessly.

“You did admirably well.” She crooks a finger, for him to follow her to the hall. 

The Doctor doesn’t want to protest, and he can’t think of anything good, so he bounds after her quivering like a dramatic heroine in a regency romance. 

And while regency romances might not consist of getting nailed to the mattress by your sworn nemesis, the rest of the Doctor’s afternoon does, and he adores every second of it.


End file.
